Attention Users and guests:

I thought I'd provide an update regarding ValueMD since many new changes have taken effect recently. We wanted to make these individual announcements sooner, but the Hurricane obviously had priority.

Firstly, ValueMD is very happy to report that our statistics continue to climb. To provide a glimpse, between July and Aug 2004, the page views on ValueMD went from about 1.25 million to about 1.44 million accompanied by about 100,000 unique visitors in their respective months (about 8 million total hits/mo. when considering the entire ValueMD website including file downloads, etc). With about 10 days left in Sept 2004, our stats show that we're averaging about 4000 unique visitors and over 65,000 page views (380,000 hits) per day. This projects our stats to reach about 2 million page views and 120,000 visitors for the month of Sept 2004 alone (over 11 million total hits/mo). Considering our recent server upgrade earlier this year to accommodate our rapid growth when we were quickly approaching the incredible 1 million page views per month milestone, we've already doubled in size again in only the past few months.

This continued growth has apparently boosted our rankings on various popular search engines such as Yahoo, Google, Alexa, etc. for relevant keywords such as "Caribbean Medical Schools forum", "USMLE step 1 forum", etc. Having already claimed the #1 ranking for many relevant keywords since last year, this boost helps solidify those claims and guarantees ValueMD's continued growth.

On behalf of all the members of ValueMD, we'd like to wish Luz, one of the children which Valuemd sponsors, a very Happy birthday. Luz will be celebrating her 3rd birthday on Sept. 22, 2004. Further information about this can be found on our Charity Info Page.

Speaking of charity, since ValueMD is mostly about medical issues, we've launched a new campaign to help raise awareness towards cancer. The first type of cancer we will focus on will be Mesothelioma. Additionally, this helps us reach our goal of helping to provide educational resources for medical students while providing support to charity. Further information can be found on the Mesothelioma Info page.

Since questions have been raised regarding our motives in the past, we decided not to directly collect and distribute donations on the users' behalf for our latest charity projects. Rather, we simply direct users and guests to the channels to make direct contributions to the respective organizations on their own. However, 100% of previous donations, as well as additional contibutions by ValueMD and its partners, will continue to be made on behalf the users so that everyone can take pride in helping others.

We've added and updated several pages on the site to provide better information. Some of these include:

• 1. Foreign Medical Schools general information area which lists and compares some popular Foreign Medical Schools.
  2. State Medical Licensing Information section which provides general info on the various state medical boards, including contact information for each one.
  3. Mesothelioma Info pageCancer Awareness section, described above.
  4. Physician Job Interview Questions page for tips about questions to ask while interviewing for a new job as a physician.
  5. Health Insurance Forum to discuss health insurance issues and compare different options.
  6. Family Forum to provide support for all the family members/significant others of medical students and grads. The former "Parents Forum" and "Spouses and Partners Forum" have now been combined into one "Family Forum".
  7. The Bookstore has been redesigned to include updated booklists for many popular foreign medical schools. This is a work in progress as we expect more school bookstores to be completed shortly.

I think I covered most of the recent changes, but many more are expected as the completion of our upgrade draws closer. We'll provide more updates as they become available.

Many of the features at ValueMD have resulted from the input of our members. Thanks for the great suggestions and we hope you keep them coming. As always, thanks for using ValueMD!

__________________
Doc
Site Administrator

The new changes look great, thanks!

i think i contributed to some of those 4000 posts per day.
s

__________________
Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

Just a couple of more recent updates to add to the list (cont from original post):

8. American University of Antigua AUA Forum
9. Vanguard University Forum

Enjoy...


more updates to follow.....

__________________
Doc
Site Administrator

Thanks DOC 8)

__________________
Each Breath you take today is sponsored in part by God.

You're killing me here Doc. I thought I had this whole site figured out and you guys go and reorganize everything. AUC forum accessible with any scrolling, Three mouse scrolls gets me to the SGU forum, 5 mouse scrolls gets me to the Relaxing forum. Now I'll have to rewire the few neuronal connections I have left.

Thanks Doc

__________________
Finally beat Super Mario Bros within 7 mins.

Oh Micro,

I'm sure you'll find time!!!

Hey Doc, I think this is a great idea!

Attention Users:

Just to add to the update above, our stats for the month of Sept 2004 showed that ValueMD had approx 111,000 visitors; 1.8 million page views; and 10.7 million total hits during the 30 day period. And these number keep climbing....

Other most recent additions to the website include (please see above for other recent updates):

• 10. Financial Aid Forum for discussions on all aspects of financial aid. We also have a new Financial Aid Official available to provide information.
  
  11. AUA General Info page to compliment the recently added AUA Forum
  
  12. Vanguard University General Info page to compliment the new Vanguard University Forum.
  
  13. Foreign Med Schools navigation menu added to the bottom of every page to easily navigate to our growing list of General Info pages of the various medical schools (most have been recently updated). Choosing the "Foreign Medical School Gen Info" option will take you to the new list of foreign medical schools which is updated frequently (a few more schools added since last update).
  
  14. New USMLE Step 2 chats to go along with our already existing USMLE Step 1 chats.
  
  15. Reorganization of Forum listings to accommodate our growing number of forums. Now divided into Caribbean vs. non-Carib based foreign medical schools.
  
  16. Updated the new 2.0 Alexa toolbar with popup blocker, google search, website comparison info, etc. You can download it for free from any of the links provided at the bottom left of most pages.

Many more projects are in the works as we get closer to the expected release of the upgraded forum. More updates to follow. We hope you take full advantage by utilizing these updates. Thanks for the great suggestions and enjoy!

__________________
Doc
Site Administrator

Doc,
2.7 million in a numbered Cayman account if you make it so that you don't *have* to write a subject.